![\"\"](\"http:\/\/img.photobucket.com\/albums\/v240\/lunarmagic\/Baby%202\/October%202010\/66215_1348231400517_1673286.jpg\")
<\/p>\nYesterday I picked up the No-Cry Sleep Solution (previously I had read the No-Cry Nap Solution. It was good, so I got the night-sleep version). I figured I would start by logging her night waking and go from there.<\/p>\n
Worst. Night. Ever. Normally<\/i> at night she does 3-hour stretches – has since she was born. She’s sick, so it’s been worse. I didn’t realize how much worse until this morning when I looked over the night’s notes and saw she woke up 8 times between 10:30pm and 9am. She did a 3-hour stretch and then woke up practically every hour. And I don’t mean waking to play, just waking rooting and squirming and flailing her little arms around, eyes closed. She’d nurse for all of 10 seconds before falling back asleep, but never contentedly. She’s still snorting laying down, meaning she is still a little stuffed up. <\/p>\n
I’ve been thinking about a lot of things lately. Reading the books has helped me gain a new perspective of things, which is good – new tools to try are always welcome. However – and it’s a big however<\/i> – it has made me over-think it all. I feel like now I’m working on different processes, and every nap time and sleep is an assessment or an experiment. It’s also made me think too much about the things she’s not doing right, like how she takes 5 1-hour naps a day instead of 3 2-hour naps like she “should”, and how she goes to bed late with us but wakes up at 9am every morning instead of going to bed at 7pm like babies “should”. I’m not saying the books are causing me to do it, I still think the books are awesome; it’s just that my personality tends to get hung up on things. Den called me, “Obsessive-Compulsive without the Compulsive.” I obsess in a bad, bad way, and I need to cut it out. What we do works just fine for us most of the time… it’s just not textbook. And of course it could use some improvement, but what couldn’t.<\/p>\n
Tonight as I tried to disentangle myself from my daughter’s death-grip in order to sneak out while she sleeps I realized that her problem is more than a strong sleep association with nursing. Yes, I nurse her to sleep pretty much exclusively – but she takes the paci and will konk out on our chests if she has it and is rocked and jiggled. She’ll wake herself up after only 20 or 30 minutes napping – not nearly long enough – but when I go in I notice she still has the paci in her mouth! There’s something else waking her up: she sleeps with something in her hands.<\/i> She started that as a newborn, sleeping on our chests with our shirts tightly clenched. Tonight she roused slightly as I un-gripped her from my shirt and I tried to get her back to sleep without her holding my shirt. She flailed, she grunted, she whined, she cried, she woke up. As soon as I let her hold my shirt she was out again. Well shit. This is somewhat of a problem. I can’t leave my shirt with her (I tried it once while I sat and watched… she pulled it right up over her face). I know older babies have lovies as a transitional object, but technically it’s not safe to put anything else near her while she’s sleeping at this age. So what the hell do I do?<\/p>\n
Until I solve that one I may be stuck with the 1-hour naps – and her sleeping right next to me at night.<\/p>\n
::<\/p>\n
On the “really cute but partially annoying” list I can now add that Kate’s arms are long enough to reach my face when nursing. Sometimes this is sweet and I love her little hands. However when she is clawing my cheek and pulling my lip every few seconds while we’re both falling asleep…. not so cute.<\/p>\n
She’s developed a real obsession for touching our faces. Den lets her do it more than I do (I have a thing about slobbery fingers…. yuck), but she’s always jamming her fingers in our mouths and grabbing at our cheeks and noses. She thinks us “nomming” on her fingers is hilarious, so she does that one just for kicks. But the rest is more exploratory. It’s so cool to watch her frown in concentration as she feels everything.<\/p>\n
In fact, she’s become kind of obsessed with touching everything<\/i>. The other evening Den was wearing her in the Beco and I noticed him leaning awkwardly against the wall. I looked over to see what he was doing and saw that he had stopped beside the thermostat and leaned over so that Kate could touch it, little arm stretched out as far as it could go. Saturday morning when ate out for breakfast she was grabbing at everything on the table. We let her reach the napkins and cutlery and her toys that we brought with us, all of which end up on the floor in roughly 2 seconds. She’s not yet intentionally<\/i> tossing them on the floor, she just hasn’t quite figured out her hand coordination enough to not drop things (or fling them over her shoulder!). She was fascinated by our menus and absolutely insistent on stretching out to touch Den’s water glass. He finally held it close enough that she could touch it and she promptly grabbed it with both hands and dumped half the water on the table, much to his surprise (it was a glass full of water, he didn’t thinks he could lift it! Ha!). And of course she had to try to fit it in her mouth.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I just love watching her play with things now, watching her fists open and close as she practices and really feels<\/i> things.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/img.photobucket.com\/albums\/v240\/lunarmagic\/Baby%202\/October%202010\/DSC_8450-500.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
That bumbo is a loaner from a friend and it’s only half a hit. It would have been great before she learned to roll over. Now she lasts for maybe 5 minutes and then starts doing this:<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/img.photobucket.com\/albums\/v240\/lunarmagic\/Baby%202\/October%202010\/DSC_8463-500.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
So, yeah. Not a huge fan of the bumbo.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Yesterday I picked up the No-Cry Sleep Solution (previously I had read the No-Cry Nap Solution. It was good, so I got the night-sleep version). I figured I would start by logging her night waking and go from there. Worst. Night. Ever. Normally at night she does 3-hour stretches – has since she was born. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":71,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[511,483,165,482],"class_list":["post-3219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-hands","tag-play","tag-sleep","tag-toys"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/71"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3219"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3219\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3222,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3219\/revisions\/3222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}